Welcome to the New ATDC

Extra, extra, read all about it!

The new ATDC is opening its doors to all Georgia Technology Startups. At the risk of overextending hyperbole:

THIS IS BIG!!!

And it could be seriously positive for your business as well as the economy of Georgia.

Who will be there?

Stephen Fleming, the new Vice Provost of Georgia Tech's Enterprise Innovation Institute and many of the ATDC's staff will be on hand to walk us all through the new ATDC.

When? TWICE?

In anticipation of the demand and to ensure as many can attend as possible this event will be run twice on August 20th, once at 3pm and again at 7pm. Feel free to RSVP for whichever event best meets your schedule as Stephen Fleming and most of the ATDC staff will be on hand for each event.

What's the Agenda?

Our agenda for the evening will be as follows:

• 2:30pm - Early Registration (for those not prepaid)
  
• 2:45pm - Networking
  
• 3:00pm - Meeting opens; Group News & Discussion
  
• 3:10pm - Stephen Fleming: The New ATDC
  
• 3:30pm - Q&A with Stephen Fleming
  
• 4:00pm - Break
  
• 4:10pm - ATDC Staff Panel Discussion
  
• 4:50pm - Closing Comments
  
• 5:00pm - Networking (Optional)
  

While there will be a short introduction, the majority of this event will be listening on the part of Stephen Fleming and the ATDC staff. Their goal with this event is to hear your suggestions for how ATDC can best help Atlanta startup entrepreneurs see the most success.

Why is this Different?

For many years, ATDC has been perceived as an elite organization that provides support for companies that were believed to be VC fundable if only they had initial support of the type that ATDC provided. This meant few companies could benefit from the ATDC.

Things have changed. A strong grass roots entrepreneurial community has sprung up over the past few years in Atlanta but has had little institutional support to date. And many of entrepreneurs may not ever need funding to see success. So ATDC is reinventing itself to meet the needs of 21st century technology startups in Georgia. What's more, this time they are proactively soliciting the startup community that has formed to help them both decide what to do and also to help them execute.

As Stephen Fleming has said the new ATDC will try a lot of things, and inevitably some of them will be failures. But they'll happily jettison the failures and continue forward with the many more successes this new approach should enable.

Yes, this really is different.

Here are some articles that should help you make sense of it all and help you understand why this rebooting of the ATDC represents such a watershed moment in time:

• The ATDC's Second Act (Atlanta Business Chronicle)
  
• Reboot the ATDC Franchise (Academic VC)
  
• Why Are We Doing This? (Academic VC)
  
• New ATDC Launch Links (Force of Good)
  

Running a Georgia Technology Startup? Be There!

Anyone interested in running a technology startup in Georgia should definitely plan to participate in one of these two meetups. Hope to see you there!